


Beware The Wolves That Haunt Us

by StewedSpice



Series: Mace Windu And The Bedtime Stories [3]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Fox Gets A Nap, Mace Windu Is Not A Robot, Mace Windu-Centric, Tired Mace Windu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27603247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StewedSpice/pseuds/StewedSpice
Summary: On Coruscant between deployments, Mace finds himself restless and unable to sleep.
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox & Mace Windu, CC-6454 | Ponds & Mace Windu
Series: Mace Windu And The Bedtime Stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095671
Comments: 7
Kudos: 75





	Beware The Wolves That Haunt Us

**Beware The Wolves That Haunt Us**

Mace gave up and pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed.

"Looks like sleep is off the table tonight Mr. Saber." He murmured, running a hand over the old stuffed strill, feeling the echoes of laughter and warmth, the sensation of curling under a warm blanket watching a thunderstorm and bright unadulterated joy where his fingertip brushed the purple button eyes. Even after 50 years, the warmth and kindness of the younglings who made Mr Saber just for Mace lingered like a welcome embrace. 

Switching on a lamp, he studied his bedroom with weary eyes, lingering on the veritable mountain of stuffed animals falling out of the overstuffed closet. In the soft shadows he could still see Depa, gangly and almost awkward at 12, flinging herself onto the pile giggling as she revelled in the Force imprints of their young creators. Pounce, the loth-cat Depa had stitched herself, was now resting in Ponds' quarters, standing guard over his Commanders sleep in Mace's stead. 

Mace huffed a laugh, after 50 years he'd finally gotten the ocean of stuffed animals down to just a mountain and he still had more plushies than anywhere else in the Temple, creches included. A gentle thought and a matching pair (in design if not colour) of squid separated from the pile and landed on his lap. Bolstered by their warmth, he sank into a light meditation, letting his mind drift. Around him ~~so so few now, after a year of war, worse than the emptiness after Geonosis~~ burned the minds of his fellow Jedi, warmth and Light like banked bonfires nestled in the soft glow of the Temple. Beyond them, far above the physical and psychic smog of Coruscant, far dimmer but no less beautiful were the minds of his men; Ponds, still awake overseeing repairs and resupply, Neyo sedated in the medbay with Slice watching over him, Trapper, Mixup, Crosscut, Slipshod, Glass, Blade and so many more. Awake and asleep, their minds shimmered like a field of stars, their bonds with each other a breathtaking nebula. Strange, when he was in the field he longed for the familiar surrounds of the Temple, for the warmth of his siblings' minds, the tranquility of his home. Now, he sat in its heart and rest eluded him, his soul longing for the comforting shimmer of his mens minds around him, the Jedi minds almost  _ too  _ bright and warm to allow him to sleep. 

He drew back in towards himself, slipping down through the shadows that clouded the Force, only to pause in what felt like a break in the clouds. Soft warmth, flickering like candlelight, the ebb and flow of waking and dreaming of hundreds of minds pressed close together. A somewhat familiar Force presence shifting around the edges allowed his tired mind to finally identify Commander Fox and the Coruscant guard barracks as the source. 'Nightmares' he thought, 'So many should-be-children and their dreams are restless'.

He rises from meditation and from his bed without further thought, gathering what he will need as he dresses and moves towards the door. Even exhausted as he is, he knows his home well enough to navigate with ease, allowing the Force to flow gently through him as he slips out a side door and follows its soft urging through the streets. Time stretches like taffy, an instant clinging like molasses, an eternity passed in a heartbeat. He disregards it, trusting in the Force, feeling it guide his footsteps, each one falling exactly where it needs to. Through a door and up the stairs, one flight, two and there -  _ here, this one  _ the Force sings - a trooper waking from a nightmare, his hands shaking, eyes ~~young, so very young, were his ever that young?~~ too bright in his face. "Udeseii, verd'ika, you're safe. I won't let you come to harm," the Mando'a words less awkward on his tongue than he expects for having never spoken them before. Those are usually Ponds' words when the shinies wake in the aftermath of their first battle, when his  _ vod  _ wake from recurrent terrors, when Mace hauls himself from dreams of devouring darkness and futures shattering like dropped crystal. 

The troopers breathing slows, subconsciously matching Mace as he gently exudes a sense of calm and peace into the Force around them. His eyes clear, and he startles as his waking mind recognises Mace as a General. "At ease trooper, neither of us are on duty," Mace tells him, a wry smile tugging almost invisibly at the corner of his lips. His absently questing hands fall upon their goal and he carefully passes a soft woolen bantha to the startled man opposite him.

"This is Moothra, and she's been waiting for you for a while now." Almost 35 years if Mace remembers correctly, Grá of Gurrcat clan, a gentle-souled zygerrian - an echo of her love and kindness nestled within Moothra's soft hide - had pressed Moothra into his hands during one of his then-frequent creche visits. "Will you introduce yourself?"

"H - hi Moothra, I'm CC-6683. I call myself Loop", wary eyes darting to Mace as Loop whispers his name, nervous and still shaken from whatever nightmare kept him from rest. Mace gives him as gentle a smile as he can summon and passes him a blanket - deep blue, weighted to tuck you in, messy stitches forming the patchwork embroidery at its edges - tucking it over and around Loops shock-still form. Mace rises from his crouch at Loops bedside, stepping deeper into the barracks to silently deposit blankets and soft plushies beside or atop the sleeping troopers. The Force is comforting and almost  _ clear  _ as it has not been in so long, a whisper of instinct and almost-knowledge guiding the selection without conscious input. He's almost done when the door whispers open to admit Commander Fox, off duty and clad in his blacks, tired enough that he nearly bumps into Mace before realising he's not one of the Vod'e. Mace waves off his salute as he did Loops, and hands him the last blanket and the loth-cat he's had tucked into his elbow for the last while - Kae, a soft white stitched from Depa's last set of Initiate whites, brimming with her joy and excitement to be a Padawan, slightly less lopsided than Pounce, warm red buttons for eyes that he can see is the same shade as the Guards armor - with a soft smile. 

"Don't pay much mind to me Commander, I get restless some nights. Would you object to my borrowing that chair to rest a while?"

"Of course not sir, but, I don't wish to presume General, but there's a free bunk beside mine." 

"Thank you Commander Fox, I think I'll take you up on that."

He follows Fox's awkward gestures to the bunks in question - close to the middle of the barracks - and slides off his boots. He almost regrets not bringing Mr Saber with him only to find him tucked into his belt opposite his 'saber. An amused breath escapes him as he lies back, and slips into sleep between one breath and the next. 

His dreams are of nebulae and candlelight, a miniature galaxy swirling around Ponds in orbit above him as he floats in a still lake lit by the glow of hundreds of tea lights, each unique, each warming his soul. In his dream he sees a shadow flicker, cobwebs across glass, a fine filament subtly dulling the glow. He reaches out and brushes it aside, only to find what he thought a single thread is a dozen woven strands of steel-strong glue, wrapped around and across the glass of the tealight of a soul, slowly smothering it. But Mace is a Jedi, even or perhaps especially in dreams and he follows the threads to their shatterpoint and watches them crumble under the slightest pressure. The dust blows away and the tealight - Fox's soul - burns free and warm. Its soft glow highlights more shadows, more choking, cloying threads wrapped around the souls at rest near him. Calmly, with gentle Force-guided purpose, he taps on shatterpoints, freeing the most tightly bound first and drifting out from there. Each freed light shows the remaining threads in clearer relief, each subsequent shatterpoint found with more ease. A Jedi even ~~or especially~~ in dreams, he knows and stands against the Dark in a fight ~~not a fight but an unravelling~~ that does not require him to call on and balance his inner darkness.

A witness in the waking world would see Master Mace Windu, sleeping peacefully, and the troopers surrounding him settling into deeper, more peaceful dreams, soft animals held close, cocooned in blankets ~~shadows under their eyes and invisible weights on their shoulders crumbling to dust, wiped away as if they had never been~~.

When morning comes, Mace will wake and he will question the Darkness snaring the minds and souls of the Coruscant Guard. But for now, he sleeps, buoyed by Force as his dreaming self shoos away the Dark, dismissing it as the Dark Side is never dismissed, untempted by the power it offers in a whisper, no power is worth the death of these precious lights.


End file.
